Monday, December 23, 2013

Remember behavioral economics, a branch of neuroscience, the
latest and greatest contribution to human knowledge.

If behavioral economists can persuade you, as they have
persuaded themselves, that human beings do not have free will and often make irrational
decisions, you would be forced to conclude that most people do not know what is
good for them. You might think that people are acting on their own rational self-interest
but they are really being manipulated by brain chemistry.

If so, people need a master, preferably working for the
government, who will force—I mean, nudge—them toward a good that they will
eventually recognizes to be the best for them.

Put all of that in a pot, stir often and you come up with
Obamacare. Of course, it is one giant leap toward socializing the insurance
market, but its proponents presented it as grounded in scientific fact.

That’s why the remaining few who defend the program insist
that once you learn what you get you will not mind losing your insurance and
your doctor.

Now, famed Stanford
neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky offers an opinion on another important matter. He tells us that human males are “pathetic” and “ludicrous.”

I will vigorously defend Sapolsky’s right to an opinion. I
would even defend his right to indulge in self-flagellation and call himself
pathetic and ludicrous.

And yet, for Sapolsky to offer his opinions as though they
were science takes it too far. People who pretend that their ideological
prejudices are scientific fact are manipulative. By the way, why isn’t it
bigotry to call men pathetic and ludicrous?

Anyway, Sapolsky is intrigued by a phenomenon that he
apparently does not understand: College bowl games.

It seems that his neuroscience knows nothing about group
pride gained through competition.

Sapolsky doesn’t get bowl games. It’s his constitutionally
protected right. I assume that he doesn’t get the Super Bowl and doesn’t get
warfare or economic competition, either.

Apparently, his pacifist soul dreams of a world filled with
peace and harmony, beyond conflict and beyond winners and losers.

Again, Sapolsky has the right, based on his delicate and
guilt-ridden sensibility not to understand
manliness. Let’s not call his opinion science.

Thus, he is somewhat perplexed by the latest from neuroscience:

When
women are present or when men are prompted to think about women, they act
differently, research shows. Well, duh. But in unexpected ways. A 2008 study in
the journal Evolutionary Psychology showed that in the mere presence of women
as witnesses, men become more likely to jaywalk and to wait until the last
second to dash on to a bus. This reflects, no doubt, the well-known belief
among men that jaywalking means you're a Roman gladiator of irrepressible
virility. As I said, pathetic.

Judgmental, don’t you think?

Why should any of these behaviors be “unexpected.” Men like
to show off to impress women. Who knew? Men like to draw women’s attention to
themselves by performing feats of derring do. Amazing! In particular, single
men, the ones who are looking to mate, take more risks and behave more aggressively
in order to show women that they can compete in the arena. OMG.

You have to stand in awe of modern neuroscience.

It makes good sense. A man who shows off in front of a woman
is auditioning for the role of protector. Apparently, the impulse to protect
women is hardwired into the male of the human species.

Nothing about it should surprise anyone. It is perfectly
consistent with the science of evolutionary psychology… which, Sapolsky acknowledges.

Yet, Sapolsky places ideology ahead of science and decides that
men need to be ridiculed. Again, that is not science.

As an interesting sidelight, Sapolsky adds that the same
effect is not present in women:

By
contrast, these studies uniformly report that cues about males have no such
effects on women.

Surely, this suggests that the difference between the sexes
that is hard-wired. Sheryl Sandberg notwithstanding women do not compete for
men by showing off their prowess in risk-taking behaviors.

I am not sure that we needed science to tell us that either,
but surely it is worth more than the passing glance that Sapolsky gives it.

Bu then there is this. It turns out that the male impulse to
show off in front of women extends to the realm of generosity, to charitable
giving:

But now
comes research carried out by Mark van Vugt and Wendy Iredale and reported last
year in the British Journal of Psychology. In the presence of women (but not
other men), men became more generous in an economic game: They made more
contributions to public goods and volunteered more time for charitable causes.
In fact, the size of their charitable contributions increased in the presence
of women they rated as more attractive.

Potlatch, anyone?

Science has now shown that men are not merely programmed to
compete in the arena. They show off for women in other areas. It seems that they are also programmed to provide for their families. When
they succeed in accumulating money or profit, their impulse is not to spend it
on themselves, but on their families or on the neediest. I am not sure why this
is news either.

As a fundamental moral principle, generosity or magnanimity
goes back to Confucius and Aristotle.

The philosophers were inclined to see it as a moral duty.
Now we know that men seem to be hardwired to perform benevolent actions.
Happily for them, duty and instinct coincide.

Examining the information gleaned from the latest studies,
Sapolsky draws a rather strange conclusion:

The
allure of the opposite sex makes men more violent, but only, it seems, in
circumstances where violence is rewarded with higher status. When status can be
achieved in a more socially desirable way, things work differently. In short,
with the right social arrangements, this ludicrous tendency of men can be
harnessed not only to encourage a ferocious goal-line stand but to make the
world a kinder place.

This paragraph is also not science. Sapolsky is making a
value judgment. He does it first by choosing the word “violent.” Were we to
examine his first examples, quoted above, we see that male risk-taking involves
jaywalking and running to catch a bus. Why are these signs of a violent
disposition?

Men are more competitive, they take more risks when they are
trying to impress comely women. It is true that men engage aggressive behavior
in order to compete for status, but calling it “violent” puts a negative connotation on it.

If human males, like other primates, compete for position on
a status hierarchy, this must count as a scientific fact. Wearing his scientist
hat Sapolsky has no business pronouncing it “ludicrous.”

Would any scientist say that it is ludicrous that the earth
revolves around the sun?

Apparently, Sapolsky dreams of a world where “status can be
achieved in a more socially desirable way.” One would like to know who is going
to decide what is and is not socially desirable, but we would all agree that college
football is more desirable than war. And didn’t William James already suggest
that economic competition is “the moral equivalent of war?”

One does not know which kind of social arrangements Sapolsky
would favor, but he ought to know, as we all know, that people who renounce
aggressive behavior are more than likely to become victimized by those who have
not.

If the male impulse to compete aggressively is hardwired
into the organism, what makes anyone think that one person’s renunciation of
violence or forced replacement of aggressive competition with charitable giving
is going to be reciprocated by those who are waiting for just the right moment
to take what you have?

Isn’t Sapolsky saying that the nation would be better if
people worked and competed less and if the government engaged itself in a grand
scheme to redistribute income?

He is certainly entitled to his opinion, but let’s not call
it science.

Better yet it would be interesting to read a psychological evaluation of Saposky's apparent fear of other men and masculinity. If he was a female he would make a perfect feminist.It seems to have reached a point that when one hears the word science used in this manner one is automatically suspicious.

One of my Chicago Boyz colleagues, Chicago Girl Margaret, located a very interesting Kipling poem that is relevant here. The context is that circa 1890, the new German Kaiser proposed an expanded social-welfare system, ideally to encompass other European countries in addition to Germany and to limit "destructive competition" in industry. Here's what Kipling had to say:

NOW this is the tale of the Council the German Kaiser decreed,To ease the strong of their burden, to help the weak in their need,He sent a word to the peoples, who struggle, and pant, and sweatThat the straw might be counted fairly and the tally of bricks be set.

The Lords of Their Hands assembled; from the East and the West they drew—Baltimore, Lille, and Essen, Brummagem, Clyde, and Crewe.And some were black from the furnace, and some were brown from the soil,And some were blue from the dye-vat; but all were wearied of toil.

And the young King said:—"I have found it, the road to the rest ye seek:"The strong shall wait for the weary, the hale shall halt for the weak;"With the even tramp of an army where no man breaks from the line,"Ye shall march to peace and plenty in the bond of brotherhood—sign!"

The paper lay on the table, the strong heads bowed thereby,And a wail went up from the peoples:—"Ay, sign—give rest, for we die!"A hand was stretched to the goose-quill, a fist was cramped to scrawl,When—the laugh of a blue-eyed maiden ran clear through the council-hall.

And each one heard Her laughing as each one saw Her plain—Saidie, Mimi, or Olga, Gretchen, or Mary Jane.And the Spirit of Man that is in Him to the light of the vision woke;And the men drew back from the paper, as a Yankee delegate spoke:—

"There's a girl in Jersey City who works on the telephone;"We're going to hitch our horses and dig for a house of our own,"With gas and water connections, and steam-heat through to the top;"And, W. Hohenzollern, I guess I shall work till I drop."

And an English delegate thundered:—"The weak an' the lame be blowed!"I've a berth in the Sou'-West workshops, a home in the Wandsworth Road;"And till the 'sociation has footed my buryin' bill,"I work for the kids an' the missus. Pull up? I be damned if I will!"

They passed one resolution:—"Your sub-committee believe"You can lighten the curse of Adam when you've lightened the curse of Eve."But till we are built like angels, with hammer and chisel and pen,"We will work for ourself and a woman, for ever and ever, amen."

Now this is the tale of the Council the German Kaiser held—The day that they razored the Grindstone, the day that the Cat was belled,The day of the Figs from Thistles, the day of the Twisted Sands,The day that the laugh of a maiden made light of the Lords of Their Hands.

Translated into modern and unpoetic terminology, Kipling seems to be saying that female hypergamy drives male competitiveness, and you can’t level out the second unless you somehow eliminate the first.

I think Matt said it best. But there is something to wondering why men think rooting for "their" team somehow transfers masculinity to them. Being a Dallas Cowboy is a lot different than pretending you're one during Super Bowl.

One other thing, "women do not compete for men by showing off their prowess in risk-taking behaviors." While they do not compete for men by "showing off their prowess, they certainly compete for men in other ways. I was sitting in a restaurant in Santa Monica with one of my "one of the guys" female friends. Michael Keaton came in with his son and a friend. My friend changed in a flash. She promptly got up and crossed over the the drink machine which took her right by Keaton's table. When she got within range her hips started swinging and her chest thrust out. Mind you, this was on the way over and back. When she returned to our table I laughed and pointed it out to her. She claims she was didn't do what I had just witnessed. Even more egregious examples are a wet t-shirt or bikini contest.

In high school, a long time ago, my friends used to hate it when girls walked by the tennis courts when we were playing. I'd start winning. Consistently. Without an audience, we were all even. Win some, lose some.

My friends were the ones who noted the phenonema. Totally unconscious on my part.